Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists

[5:01 am]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/politics/17intel.html?ei=5065&en=2aeff500108cbed3&ex=1124942400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.

The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.

"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.

The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.

At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.

The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."

The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.

Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.

Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.

Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.

Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.

The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.

A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."

"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."

Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.

"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."

"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."

Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.

But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.

[FORD]

Hmmm.... wonder why Agent Zimmerman is using an alias?

[DrMaddVibe]

http://homepage.mac.com/orosen/.cv/orosen/Public/Bill%20Clinton%20Turns%20Down%20Usa4484-binhex.hqx

Bill Clinton explaining in his own words, how the Sudan offered us Bin Laden on a silver platter, but we didn't take him because Bubba didn't think we could try and convict him in an American court.

The Sudan booted him out, and then Bin Laden goes to Afghanistan, forging a relationship with the Taliban and the rest is, well, history. Hey, at least he "pleaded with the Saudis to take him." If we couldn't convict a savage who declared war against us, perhaps Janet Reno wasn't the right man for the job.

[DrMaddVibe]

http://www.gsnmagazine.com/aug_05/dod_lawyers.html

“Congressman Weldon has met with several people who were working on Able Danger to identify where Al Qaeda was set up around the world,” said Caso. “They made the suggestion that this information be passed to the FBI, and lawyers within the Defense Department -- whether within Special Ops or within OSD, we don’t know -- and the lawyers said, ‘No’.”

[DrMaddVibe]

http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2005/Usama.pdf

Clinton State Department Documents Outlined bin Laden Threat to the United States in Summer 1996

“Top Secret” Analysis Warned Clinton Administration

"[bin Laden] has Wherewithal to Strike U.S. Interests"

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released two declassified “Top Secret” State Department documents that warned Clinton administration officials of the activities and influence of Osama bin Laden following his alleged “expulsion” from Sudan in May 1996. The documents, authored by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, discuss bin Laden’s travels, his prolonged stay in Afghanistan, financial networks, anti-Western threats in press interviews, ties to the Khobar Towers bombing and bin Laden’s “emboldened” threats against U.S. interests.



The State Department documents were produced to Judicial Watch last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed with the State Department on December 11, 2001 concerning the government of Sudan’s reported offer to share intelligence files on Osama bin Laden. The Clinton administration also reportedly rebuffed an offer by Sudanese officials to turn bin Laden himself over to the U.S.



According to the declassified documents, bin Laden’s many passports and his private plane allow him considerable freedom to travel “with little fear of being intercepted or tracked.” Bin Laden reportedly even traveled to London where he gave a press interview subsequent to his departure from Sudan. The report also warns that bin Laden’s prolonged stay in Afghanistan “could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum.” One analysis document, dated July 18, 1996, asks the provocative question: “Terrorism/Usama bin Ladin: Who’s Chasing Whom.”



The documents predict that even if bin Laden were forced to keep on the move, it would prove no more than an inconvenience since, “. . . his informal and transnational network of businesses and associates remains resilient.” The report goes on to explain that bin Ladin on the move, “. . .can retain the capability to support individuals and groups who have the motive and wherewithal to attack U.S. interests almost worldwide.”



“This is not a case of hindsight being 20/20,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents prove the Clinton administration knew the danger Osama bin Laden posed to the United States back in 1996 and yet failed to take any meaningful action to stop him.”



Click here to read the actual Clinton State Department documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, and click here to read a New York Times article written about Judicial Watch’s discovery.

[Nickdfresh]

Yeah, it's all CLINTON's fault even though BUSHit was President for nine months.

Myths Debunked
Clinton Didn't Fight Terrorism

Myth: Clinton Did Nothing To Fight Terrorism

PBS Frontline

Several days after the millennium celebrations, President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, announced that in the weeks before the New Year, law enforcement had disrupted terrorist cells "in eight countries and attacks were almost certainly prevented." He didn't give details, but FRONTLINE has compiled the following list from intelligence sources and press reports… Click here for more.

The Center for Democracy and Technology

Clinton Administration Counter Terrorism Initiative

Washington Post

The Covert Hunt for bin Laden
Broad Effort Launched After '98 Attacks

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2001; Page A01

Beginning on Aug. 7, 1998, the day that al Qaeda destroyed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Clinton directed a campaign of increasing scope and lethality against bin Laden's network that carried through his final days in office.

• In addition to a secret "finding" to authorize covert action, which has been reported before, Clinton signed three highly classified Memoranda of Notification expanding the available tools. In succession, the president authorized killing instead of capturing bin Laden, then added several of al Qaeda's senior lieutenants, and finally approved the shooting down of private civilian aircraft on which they flew.

• The Clinton administration ordered the Navy to maintain two Los Angeles-class attack submarines on permanent station in the nearest available waters, enabling the U.S. military to place Tomahawk cruise missiles on any target in Afghanistan within about six hours of receiving the order.

• Three times after Aug. 20, 1998, when Clinton ordered the only missile strike of his presidency against bin Laden's organization, the CIA came close enough to pinpointing bin Laden that Clinton authorized final preparations to launch. In each case, doubts about the intelligence aborted the mission.

• The CIA's directorate of operations recruited, trained, paid or equipped surrogate forces in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and among tribal militias inside Afghanistan, with the common purpose of capturing or killing bin Laden. The Pakistani channel, disclosed previously in The Washington Post, and its Uzbek counterpart, which has not been reported before, never bore fruit. Inside Afghanistan, tribal allies twice reported to their CIA handlers that they fought skirmishes with bin Laden's forces, but they inflicted no verified damage.

• Operatives of the CIA's Special Activities Division made at least one clandestine entry into Afghanistan in 1999. They prepared a desert airstrip to extract bin Laden, if captured, or to evacuate U.S. tribal allies, if cornered. The Special Collection Service, a joint project of the CIA and the National Security Agency, also slipped into Afghanistan to place listening devices within range of al Qaeda's tactical radios.

The lines Clinton opted not to cross continued to define U.S. policy in his successor's first eight months. Clinton stopped short of using more decisive military instruments, including U.S. ground forces, and declined to expand the reach of the war to the Taliban regime that hosted bin Laden and his fighters after 1996.

Not until the catastrophe of Sept. 11 -- when terrorists used hijacked airliners to destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon -- did President Bush obliterate those boundaries…

https://www.Salon.com

Don't blame Clinton
Conservatives who once ridiculed and obstructed the former president's aggressive efforts to fight terrorism are now trying to pin Sept. 11 on him. They have a lot of nerve. Part 2 of a debate.

By Joe Conason

Jan. 15, 2002 | When terrorists first tried to take down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb in February 1993, there was no organized outcry of recrimination against George Herbert Walker Bush, who had left the Oval Office a scant six weeks earlier. Nobody sought political advantage by blaming Bush for the intelligence failures that had allowed the terrorist perpetrators to conspire undetected for more than three years…

Tribune Media Services

Don't blame it on Bill Clinton

October 18, 2001 Posted: 12:24 PM EDT (1624 GMT)

By Bill Press

Gingrich and company derail the president and the country for two whole years over a minor sex scandal in the White House -- magnifying one act of oral sex into a full time, $50 million Independent Counsel investigation, weeks of House Judiciary Committee hearings, impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial in the Senate -- and then they accuse Clinton of not staying focused on government business!

Have they no shame?

The truth, of course, is just the opposite. Given how distracted he was by the Lewinsky scandal, (which was of his own making, but blown out of proportion by his political enemies), it’s amazing Clinton was able to continue governing at all. And during that time, as The Washington Post reveals, he did a great deal to combat terrorism, much of it behind the scenes.

Clinton’s most public response, of course, were the cruise missile attacks of 1998, directed against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and the Sudan, following the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Operating on limited intelligence -- at that time, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tazikistan refused to share information on the terrorists whereabouts inside Afghanistan -- U. S. strikes missed bin Laden by only a couple of hours.

Even so, Clinton was accused of only firing missiles in order to divert media attention from the Lewinsky hearings. A longer campaign would have stirred up even more criticism.

So Clinton tried another tack. He sponsored legislation to freeze the financial assets of international organizations suspected of funneling money to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network -- identical to orders given by President Bush this month -- but it was killed, on behalf of big banks, by Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas…

In 1998, Clinton also signed a secret agreement with Uzbekistan to begin joint covert operations against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. U.S. Special Forces have been training there ever since, which is why the Pentagon was immediately able to use Uzbekistan as a staging area for forays into Afghanistan…

Clinton targeted bin Laden even before he moved to Afghanistan. In 1996, his administration brokered an agreement with the government of Sudan to arrest the terrorist leader and turn him over to Saudi Arabia. For 10 weeks, Clinton tried to persuade the Saudis to accept the offer. They refused. With no cooperation from the Saudis, the deal fell apart.

Conclusion: Rohrbacher, Limbaugh, Gingrich are dead wrong when they blame Bill Clinton for September 11. Did Clinton get Osama bin Laden “dead or alive?” No, but he came close, several times -- long before tracking down terrorists became a national priority.

Myth: Clinton bombed an Aspirin Factory

CNN

U.S. claims more evidence linking Sudanese plant to chemical weapons

September 1, 1998
plant

The destroyed Shifa Pharmaceutical facility


Web posted at: 7:01 p.m. EDT (2301 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States had been suspicious of the Shifa Pharmaceutical facility in Sudan for two years, a State Department official said Tuesday, after a December 1996 report showed heavy security around the plant…

"We had previously collected samples from other suspected sites in Sudan," the official said, "but only the sample from the Shifa facility tested positively for chemical weapons precursors. We know of no other factors in the environment that could result in a positive EMPTA signature." [Emphasis added.]

MSNBC

U.S. warms to ‘rogue’ Sudan regime

By Bob Arnot

Feb. 4, 2002

In August 1998, just after the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings, the Clinton administration responded with Tomahawk missile strikes against alleged bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan, and a pharmaceutical plant outside Khartoum.
Image: Sudan-us-bombs-factory
U.S. missiles destroyed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum on
Aug. 20, 1998

Washington claimed that nerve gas precursors were found in soil samples taken there and the CIA stands by those claims. Sudan denied the charges and it emerged later that at least some of the U.S. evidence was very thin. [“Thin” does NOT mean nonexistent.]

Myth: The Sudanese offered to turn bin Laden over to the U.S., and Clinton refused

Washington Post Service

In '96, Sudan Offered to Arrest bin Laden

Barton Gellman

Thursday, October 4, 2001

Saudis Balked at Accepting U.S. Plan

WASHINGTON The government of Sudan, using a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in custody in Saudi Arabia, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later.

Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept Mr. bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture…

The New York Times

Many Say U.S. Planned for Terror but Failed to Take Action

By THE NEW YORK TIMES December 30, 2001

Diplomacy and Politics
A Growing Effort Against bin Laden

As Mr. Clinton prepared his re-election bid in 1996, the administration made several crucial decisions. Recognizing the growing significance of Mr. bin Laden, the C.I.A. created a virtual station, code-named Alex, to track his activities around the world.

In the Middle East, American diplomats pressed the hard-line Islamic regime of Sudan to expel Mr. bin Laden, even if that pushed him back into Afghanistan.

To build support for this effort among Middle Eastern governments, the State Department circulated a dossier that accused Mr. bin Laden of financing radical Islamic causes around the world.

The document implicated him in several attacks on Americans, including the 1992 bombing of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, where American troops had stayed on their way to Somalia. It also said Mr. bin Laden's associates had trained the Somalis who killed 18 American servicemen in Mogadishu in 1993.

Sudanese officials met with their C.I.A. and State Department counterparts and signaled that they might turn Mr. bin Laden over to another country. Saudi Arabia and Egypt were possibilities.

State Department and C.I.A. officials urged both Egypt and Saudi Arabia to accept him, according to former Clinton officials. "But both were afraid of the domestic reaction and refused," one recalled.

Critics of the administration's effort said this was an early missed opportunity to destroy Al Qaeda. Mr. Clinton himself would have had to lean hard on the Saudi and Egyptian governments. The White House believed no amount of pressure would change the outcome, and Mr. Clinton risked spending valuable capital on a losing cause. "We were not about to have the president make a call and be told no," one official explained.

Sudan obliquely hinted that it might turn Mr. bin Laden over to the United States, a former official said. But the Justice Department reviewed the case and concluded in the spring of 1996 that it did not have enough evidence to charge him with the attacks on American troops in Yemen and Somalia.

This article was reported by Judith Miller, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. and written by Ms. Miller.

[Jeff Gerth broke the Whitewater story in 1992, after listening only to Clinton’s Arkansas political enemies. He has never been a friend of Clinton, so it isn’t surprising how this article spins the Clinton administration’s inability to convince another government to take bin Laden.]

Link

[DrMaddVibe]

Clinton Lawyers Fretted Over bin Laden's Comfort

The CIA's former bin Laden desk chief revealed Thursday night that Clinton administration lawyers warned counterterrorism agents that Osama bin Laden had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they captured him during planned raids into Afghanistan.

"The lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden`s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him," former bin Laden desk chief Michael Scheuer told MSNBC's "Hardball."

"We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, [for] special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair," Scheuer explained. "They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard."

"The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community," the former CIA man lamented.

Concerns like that, as well as foot-dragging by the White House, resulted in one missed opportunity after another to get the al-Qaida terror mastermind, Scheuer said.

"We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act," he claimed.

Although sharply critical of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, the CIA counterterrorism specialist put the blame for bin Laden's escape firmly on Clinton.

"In terms of which administration had more chances, Mr. Clinton's administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day," Scheuer said.

[DrMaddVibe]

Monday, Aug. 22, 2005 9:27 p.m. EDT

New Witness Backs Able Danger Claims

A second member of an elite military intelligence team has come forward to corroborate claims that the group, code named Able Danger, identified lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta more than a year before the 9/11 attacks.

"Atta was identified by Able Danger in January-February of 2000," Navy Capt. Scott J. Phillpott told Fox News and the New York Times.

"I will not discuss the issues outside of my chain of command and the Department of Defense," he insisted. "But my story is consistent . . . I have nothing else to say."

Phillpott's brief but emphatic comments back the statements of Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who came forward last week to confirm claims by Rep. Curt Weldon that the Able Danger group had identified Atta.

Updating reporters on the Pentagon's own investigation of Able Danger, spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that material turned over by Phillpott contained no evidence to support the Atta claim.

But additional corroboration for Shaffer and Phillpott's accounts was provided by James D. Smith, a former Defense Department contractor who said he worked on a chart for Able Danger before the 9/11 attacks.

Smith told the New York Times that he kept a copy of the chart, including a photo of Mohamed Atta, on his office wall at Andrews Air Force Base.

[Nickdfresh]

Agent Defends Military Unit's Data on 9/11 Hijackers
Wednesday, August 17, 2005

WASHINGTON — Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (search), a military intelligence specialist who worked on a secret pre-Sept. 11 investigative unit called Able Danger (search), has gone on the record, telling FOX News that he personally briefed staffers with the Sept. 11 commission in October 2003 about Mohamed Atta.

A statement from the commission — formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — said that three staffers attended the meeting, but none, including Executive Director Phil Zelikow, remembers Shaffer mentioning Atta.

Still, the intelligence agent is standing by his claim that he told them that the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks had been identified in the summer of 2000 as an Al Qaeda operative living in the United States.

"What we talked about to the Sept. 11 commission was we found that these guys matched a pattern, a pattern, which in this case with Atta and the other four terrorists, matched the Brooklyn location," Shaffer said in his first television interview.

He said the intelligence unit used algorithms based on many items of information that popped out patterns that linked individuals to a group or location. The other three terrorists linked were Khalid al-Mihdhar (search), Nawaf al-Hazmi (search) and Marwan al-Shehhi (search).

Shaffer's briefing with the staffers took place in Bagram, Afghanistan. A Sept. 11 commission spokesman said the commission made two broad requests to the Pentagon for information relating to Able Danger, but received nothing to back up Shaffer's claim.

"None of the documents turned over to the commission mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers," the spokesman said. Shaffer said the commission never received the whole story.

"I'm told confidently by the person who moved the material over, that the Sept. 11 commission received two briefcase-sized containers of documents. I can tell you for a fact that would not be one-twentieth of the information that Able Danger consisted of during the time we spent" investigating, Shaffer said.

Shaffer said in the late summer of 2000, he tried three times to set up meetings between the FBI's Washington field office and officials with Able Danger who believed the information about Atta should be shared with domestic law enforcement.

Michael Mason, head of the FBI field office, said it's possible the meetings were arranged, but that cannot be verified by any means.

It is "premature at best to suggest that the information gathered at such a meeting would have prevented the events of Sept. 11," Mason added.

Shaffer said each of the meetings was cancelled on short notice — by members of the special operations command.

"On these occasions when we had set up these meetings between the FBI and special operations command, special operations command pulled out of all three. They decided not to show up," he said.

Shaffer said the meetings were canceled for a variety of reasons, including concern about the military investigating individuals who were in this country legally. Some of the hijackers had valid visas. They also were concerned that if any fallout came from the FBI's activities, the special operations people feared they would take the hit.

According to two sources, Able Danger was set up in the late 1990s to track Usama bin Laden's terror network worldwide. Shaffer said its omission from the final Sept. 11 commission report makes it a "partial record."

"Leaving out a project targeting Al Qaeda as a global threat a year before we're attacked by Al Qaeda is equivalent to having an investigation into Pearl Harbor and leaving, somehow, out the Japanese," Shaffer said.

FOX News has learned that Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year over a disputed phone bill and allegations that he had not gone through the proper chain of command to obtain an award for Able Danger. Shaffer's lawyer told FOX News that no formal action has ever been taken against Shaffer — and since then he was promoted by the Army to lieutenant colonel.

A military spokesman told FOX News that the Pentagon wants more clarity on the issue and continues to interview those involved. Shaffer said he has now spoken with senior defense officials.

FOX News' Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

I saw this guy interviewed this morning on CNN. He seems very odd, and something tells me his story is increasingly shit....

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
Clinton Lawyers Fretted Over bin Laden's Comfort

The CIA's former bin Laden desk chief revealed Thursday night that Clinton administration lawyers warned counterterrorism agents that Osama bin Laden had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they captured him during planned raids into Afghanistan.

"The lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden`s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him," former bin Laden desk chief Michael Scheuer told MSNBC's "Hardball."

"We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, [for] special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair," Scheuer explained. "They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard."

"The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community," the former CIA man lamented.

Concerns like that, as well as foot-dragging by the White House, resulted in one missed opportunity after another to get the al-Qaida terror mastermind, Scheuer said.

"We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act," he claimed.

Although sharply critical of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, the CIA counterterrorism specialist put the blame for bin Laden's escape firmly on Clinton.

"In terms of which administration had more chances, Mr. Clinton's administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day," Scheuer said.

Just curious, but what did BUSH's lawyers say about BIN LADEN, oh wait! BUSH didn't even know who he was....

Uhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh!

[Warham]

Clinton's not innocent, no matter how you spin it. Bush isn't either.

[FORD]

At least Clinton tried to kill the bastard. Chimpy acts like he never heard of him. Of course that's what he said about Ken Lay too.

[Warham]

Clinton had how many opportunities to have the Sudanese hand him over?

[LoungeMachine]

Originally posted by Warham
Clinton's not innocent, no matter how you spin it. Bush isn't either.

Ahh, but only ONE of the 2 planned to invade and occupy Iraq BEFORE 9/11 even happened.

Even a kool-ade drinking warmonger knows that

[Warham]

Originally posted by LoungeMachine
Ahh, but only ONE of the 2 planned to invade and occupy Iraq BEFORE 9/11 even happened.

Even a kool-ade drinking warmonger knows that

I don't disagree with invading Iraq. And what's your proof he planned it before 9/11? Because Poppy was in Saddam's crosshairs in the early 90's?

I do disagree with Clinton planning his daily blowjobs instead of worrying about nabbing bin Laden.